Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Dining with the Bloggers - April 13th

The theme this week is cheese. I confess that this is my doing - it was a choice made several weeks back and by the time "cheese week" rolled around, I was wishing it was "lettuce week" or some such. I've been indulging a bit too much lately and with my trip to Sicily rapidly approaching, I feel the need to good (so that I can be bad in Sicily, of course).

With cheese I didn't see many options for being good (as in eating healthfully), so I just went for being good (as in delicious). I thought about pizza, but then came across Santos' Tomato Tart. If you take a look, you'll see...this is what pizza wants to be when it grows up.

Santos has a breezy way of describing how she cooks that makes it sound so easy. For the pastry she "...added all these little bits and bobs of cheese i had in the fridge...". She used a combination of parmesan, gruyere, fontina and pecorino. Yum. I looked in my fridge and found parmesan, leerdammer, and jack. Oh dear... do they even go together? I hemmed and hawed about which to use and which to leave out, but finally decided (in the spirit of "bits and bobs") to use them all.

I used cherry tomatoes, cut the pastry recipe in half, and made individual tarts. I had enough pastry for three but stuck one blob in the freezer for later and made just two tarts. They came out beautifully. It was delicious too - the rich cheesy crust and sweet roasted tomatoes were both wonderful. I have one more tart waiting to be reheated tomorrow...then I'm going to be good.

5 comments:

I'm afraid my tomatoes were imported, but they still tasted pretty darn good! Leerdammer (spelled it wrong originally - I'm going to correct that) I just learned last night is a Dutch cheese. It looks like Swiss cheese and is rich and mild tasting. Cook's Thesaurus compares it to Jarlsburg and Emmental. For at least a year I've been eating a sample in Whole Foods almost every week (they usually have cheese samples out on the weekend and this is one that makes frequent appearances). I finally bought a chunk a couple of weeks ago.

Hi Rachel - sorry, my little tarts are all gone and no pictures to show for it! When I started doing this I decided I would not post pictures for these Dining with the Bloggers posts and instead direct people to the original posts for photos - it puts the focus where it should be (the blogger who originally posted the recipe) and lets me cook without a camera for a change! Click on one of the links above to see Santos' rendition of her Tomato Tart.

About Me

My name is Cathy and I live in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC in the USA. I love to cook, but have had a tendency to do it strictly by the book. I love to eat too, but have an unfortunately long list of dislikes. It's time for a change.